The CoachAccountable Blog

Over the weekend I met a fellow who gave me a glimpse into a world of coaching that is otherwise quite uncharted by me: internal corporate training.  Now then, the internal workings of a corporate training program may as well be assumed sensitive information, so out of respect for that assumption I’ve altered particulars and paraphrased quotations a bit while still retaining the proper gist.  “Chris” is a senior sales agent, and is responsible for giving training, guidance and evaluation to a rotating cadre of other sales agents in his firm on ongoing basis.  When he asked what I do and I told him of CoachAccountable, it turned out we had a lot to talk about.

“Yeah, I’m coaching a bunch of other sales people at any given time.”  He gave me a rundown of how that coaching is managed, the center of which is a master template Excel spreadsheet that gets filled out whenever he coaches a fellow employee.  I hadn’t seen a ugly spreadsheet masquerading as software since the beloved small e-commerce company I used to work for got acquired by Network Solutions, but sure enough this was such a thing.  It was mainly comprised of few boxes into which hard-to-read notes are typed, a few pull down menus hinting that 5 is swell and 1 is strongly not swell, and a button to “lock this document” that doesn’t work but provides at least the illusion that the content is tamper proof once mutually signed off on.

I asked what happened to these forms once filled out.  “I’ll send this to the person I coached, send a copy to their manager, and file it in the training records per the usual protocol.”  Does anyone ever reads these, or, say, look back more than 2 or 3 sessions to see an agent’s progression over time?  “No, I don’t think anyone ever looks back one session.”  How about action plans and areas of focus that get hammered out in these sessions, is there any sort of follow up or check in on that?  “No, once the form is filled out and sent off, that’s pretty much it.”

I gave Chris a look around CoachAccountable, showing off how things work and explaining the difference they make in coaching, and curious about how useful it might be to a man in his position.  Chris is wicked smart, an expert in his domain and completely qualified to offer the kind of coaching and support that his sales colleagues need.  So it intrigued me when he said that the guy who designed his company’s coaching program had left the company months ago, and that it wasn’t clear how to design one that could replace what was already established.

Buried in this notion is a brilliant insight: people who have grade-A domain knowledge and expertise, plus a willingness and ability to impart that expertise to others, are 90% of the way to being effective coaches who are able to design programs for their coachees.  It just doesn’t seem that way only because a fancy notion like “design a coaching program” seems like a huge barrier, one requiring a whole other level of training and formality.

But a “coaching program” can be really simple in structure, something like, say:

“We talk once a week.  We make actions, we define metrics.  During the week you do those actions, you track those metrics.  Then we talk about how it went.  Lather, rinse, repeat.”

The “program” doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective, because the real magic is in the actual coaching: the actual expertise being communicated, the actual insights being discovered, the actual support being given.  When tied to a system like CoachAccountable, a simple program is made real, tangible, and easy to manage.

I setup Chris with an account of his own.  I then bumped his free trial up to 90 days, which I figure is a worthy sacrifice in this instance to give CoachAccountable’s first foray into corporate culture (that I know of) a decent chance for adoption (things tend to move a little more, ahem, slowly in corporate settings).

Time will tell if CoachAccountable will positively affect the outcomes of the training work done at Chris’s firm, or even used in real practice at all.  By a similar token, I have no idea how many other corporate training programs are run off of ugly excel spreadsheets.  For now I am content to ponder how many such trainers and leaders with top-notch expertise could have their coaching made easier and more effective with just a little bit of software.

When working with a client, a coach invariably creates and/or unearths valuable insights, plans of action, and other useful bits which pertain to what that client is ultimately up to and dealing with.  A colleague (and CoachAccountable early adopter) recently pointed out that there are many instances of coaches who do not take notes of their sessions, or,  if they do, do not share those notes with their clients.

I found this to be surprising, and then upon a moment’s reflection not surprising at all.  Surprising because for the last several months I’ve been building and evolving a system which prominently features notes as a central facet of the coaching relationship.  Then not surprising when I remembered that I myself have done months-long coaching engagements wherein notes were just not part of the mix.

On reflection I find the whole thing interesting: while in the thick of coaching, if our call had all the hallmarks of a “good” session (a nice insight or two about wherever they might be stuck, a few new & exciting ideas of things to focus on in the coming week, and hearing my client say “Ooh, good point!” or “Ah, I like that idea!” a few times) I figured I was doing a good job.  Especially when they were generally eager for the next time we talked.  It never occurred to me that I should go one extra mile and type up the notes from the session.  That was their job, right?  Of course they would do it for the sake of getting the most of out being coached–if it was their style to do so.

This was my thinking.  I was in essence confusing the situation for the collegiate model: where students go to class, are motivated to do well, and thus take (and study!) their own notes to cement in the benefit of having attended lecture.  But coaching is different, an open ended relationship that usually doesn’t have a tidy ending like the final exam.  It’s an oft ongoing process offering no strong cue for note taking (to say nothing of note review).

On deeper consideration of the matter I realize several significant wins for note taking and sharing, wins that motivate the practice and guide it.  My experience centers around the coach being the one taking the notes, so I’ll treat that here as a foregone conclusion (there may be some great styles of coaching based on the client taking and sharing notes from coaching sessions, but that’s a matter for another essay).

Supplementing sessions with note write-ups lets a coach explicitly highlight and reiterate those nuggets that he or she feels are most important, and amounts to the trusted adviser saying to the advisee “Here, I want you to remember and take away this.”  In an hour long conversation there are usually all kinds of “aha!” moments and insights.  Notes help ensure that a client carries forth more than just a swirl of (easily forgotten) good ideas and a warm fuzzy feeling.  They are a sort of director’s cut of the work done together, and tangibly remind readers of the key ideas gained by that work.  As a resource that a client can refer to again after one session and before the next, this is a more reliable way to have coaching insights be put into action than to rely on mental recall alone.

Shared notes also make solid documentation of the life of a coaching relationship.  A review of last session’s notes (by coach or client) quickly orients the conversation for this one.  Patterns and reruns are easier to detect by having a progression of notes to review, and so is gradual progress and accomplishment.

A few sentences goes a long way. Better yet, the system added those actions without me needing to type them.

In total, coaching notes (and the sharing thereof) appear to make a formidable pillar of a coaching strategy: good coaching is made net better when its fruits are efficiently captured for review and reinforcement.  They needn’t be a lot of work to create, either.  I literally take around 5 minutes to type up my session notes in my standard favorite template: 2 or 3 sentences to recap the current situation going in, and 3 or 4 bullet points of key insights and distinctions are sufficient to distill the real nuggets of an hour long conversation.

For me CoachAccountable has made the difference of having notes be a no-brainer part of the process.  As my platform for notes, it makes the nuts and bolts of actually capturing, organizing and sharing them dead simple.  Compare it to composing notes as emails to clients: in that approach finding any or all past notes requires a search (if I’m lucky) or diligent tagging (or folder organization), and my clients are on their own for similar organization on their end: I can’t provide it for them.  In CoachAccountable the system keeps notes all together and easy to access for both me and my clients.  The net effect of the system is a powerful nudge towards keeping and sharing notes, by removing some of the barriers of effort and providing a compelling packaging to the value-adding aspect of the coaching experience.

Once again after illustrating of my fondness of CoachAccountable as an instrument in my coaching, an invitation to try it seems quite fitting.  If you’d like try taking and sharing notes with your clients in CoachAccountable, you can try the software free for thirty days.

I love using CoachAccountable for managing my coaching relationships.  But I have an unfair advantage in understanding why: I have access to coaching relationships in the system that are well under way.  I see it containing data that reveals trends, hosting a comprehensive history of notes, a overall serving as a running illustration of progress.

CoachAccountable looks good as a repository of records and progress because of this, in a way that blank slate graphics stating “Click here to add your first…” simply can’t.

Today that changes.  Coaches who sign up for an account now have their account pre-loaded with data from a 4-month long running coaching relationship, giving them a real sense of how the system serves to track and document progress over time well before they otherwise could with their own clients.

The history of notes, metrics, actions and more are all ripe for perusal.  The data for the Demo Client is you might say “air brushed”: essentially a real coaching relationship (astute readers will recognize Tim) but with most personally identifying bits either removed or changed.

If you’re curious about using coaching software now’s an even better time than before to give it a whirl.  With a full coaching relationship at your fingertips in your free trial account it’s even easier to explore and appreciate how useful it can be.

The other day I illustrated why Metrics are awesome and how they serve coaching relationships.  Today I’m going to sketch out the ways in which CoachAccountable Sessions are great.

A nearly-blank slate! You can use a blank if you want to, though.

At the most basic level, sessions aren’t that special: a way to take notes in an editor with formatting options much like any word processor.  Even with your collection of customizable templates that serve as starting points for your note taking (the above is exactly what I use for regular weekly sessions), we’re not yet talking anything that MS Word can’t do once you’ve hammered out a few template files.

For me the magic starts about 5 minutes before a coaching call.  I log in to CoachAccountable and click on the client with whom I’m about to have a session, and this is what greets me in the Overview:

This tab tells me what she’s been up to….

And this is my color-coded guide for upcoming (and past) shenanigans.

Brilliant.  At a glance (and with the aid of spiffy color coding), I can quickly glean how exactly my client is doing.  Metrics are color coded according to how the figure stacks up against the goal trend line: green and we’re good, light green we’re good but at this rate we’re slipping, yellow we’re under the mark but getting closer, red, well you can guess.  Actions show red when late, yellow when nearly late, and green when on time.  I see Bran wrote a new journal entry, and if there were any newly shared files or completed worksheets, well, those would show up here too.

So that’s my pre-game: it’s quick, it gets me oriented with what exactly my client is dealing with, and informs me of where she’s succeeding, where she’s not.  This will all save us precious minutes on our coaching call, which of course generally feels like it goes by too fast.  Beautifully, this also softens the pain of a progress report in an off week: we can jump straight to dealing with what’s so.  Excuses or hemming & hawing to save face are completely skipped over.

Right then, on to the actual coaching call.  I know it is time because I set CoachAccountable to send me a text alert exactly one minute before my appointments.  I like one minute because it lets me wrap up my review of my client’s progress since our last call, and gets me calling my client right on time, which is a fine touch of professionalism.   (I used to allow my clients to be responsible for calling me, but late starts were too regular, so I take it upon myself to call.  With CoachAccountable appointment reminders I never miss ’em.)

When the call starts I click the “+Session Notes” button, choose my usual template for weekly calls and hit “Begin”.

Then I put down CoachAccountable for most of the hour: I find typing to be a distraction from focused coaching, and have little problem recalling the big points (for inclusion in the session notes) until after the call.  For reasons that will be clear below, my clients know to be logged in themselves to CoachAccountable when possible.

It’s not my purpose here to riff on the actual substance of coaching, for that is a matter of an individual’s style and training and not to be dictated by software.  But I will offer of a few things that I do do during my coaching calls as they pertain to CoachAccountable.

“Great, put that in as an action.” is one of my new favorite things to utter during calls.  Almost invariably my clients and I will hit upon several useful actions that they can focus on in the coming week, and I let them make their own action plan by entering a set of actions.  “Don’t forget to set a few reminders for that.” is another choice phrase, one which I reserve for the kinds of actions that a particular client may be apt to procrastinate on (this is another bit of useful awareness that the color-coded record of actions is good for!).

Towards the end of the call I’m apt to hit the refresh button on the Actions tab and glimpse at what my client has set up for themselves, including due dates.

Metric annotations are another thing I’ll often call for during our call.  Generally, all the Metric stats are entered by the time I get on the phone with my clients.  But we might discover a few nuggets of insight about those stats as we talk.  So I might add (or ask my client to add) some annotations on some of the data points to really build the story around the raw numbers, things like why there was no movement for a week, or why there’s been a large burst in the last two weeks that hasn’t been there the last two months.  Realizations like these are gold for eliminating pitfalls and doubling down on successes, so during our call we record them.

Less often but occasionally I might assign a worksheet as homework, fitting to our discussion and/or plan moving forward.  I might also tell my client to make an action of the form “Write a journal entry about…”.  Having clients journal within CoachAccountable on relevant topics is useful to both of us: entries go in the tangible record of work done in the coaching relationship that both parties can see and look back upon at any time.

Towards the end of our call I like to review that the actions (and possibly metrics) that have been created in CoachAccountable constitute a good game for my client in the week to come: not too much, not too little, and with realistic deadlines.

Then the call ends.  At this point my practice is to type up the session notes right then and there, while still fresh in my mind.

When I hit mark complete, CoachAccountable presents me with a fine idea:

I click yes to make the session notes an even more accurate depiction of what went down during our call.  Then another good idea is presented for my convenience:

My clients find getting these useful: a succinct account of what we just went over, delivered right to their inbox within minutes of our call.  I think it serves nicely to remind them of the key points, and get them better focused on a good week.  With a tick of the check box I can CC myself, and I can add a personal note about the session as a whole that will go direct to my client.  Adding the note as a Stream comment puts it into place as part of the dialog between client and coach in the running records of all things organized by CoachAccountable.

The session is then filed in the chronicle of notes, there to be reviewed, emailed, or printed at anytime by me or my client:

And that’s what it’s like to use CoachAccountable for managing sessions and session notes.  To recap the perks:

1. Prepping for sessions is a snap.
2. Knowing how things are going beforehand saves valuable session time.
3. Automated reminders help ensure you start on time.
4. A clear plan  of action can be created and shared in real time, and reminders can keep that plan on track between sessions.
5. Notes can be readily emailed or printed, and are there for later reference.

Look nice?  It is.  You can try it with your own clients on your very next coaching call with a free 30 day trial.

During the summer I’ve gone on a little about how I’m loving CoachAccountable for my coaching.  Now that it’s released and in the wild, the time is right to do some storytelling on why.

Today I’m going to talk about Metrics, CoachAccountable’s way of managing goals and progress in terms of real numbers.  Here’s an example of what a Metric that’s well in progress looks like:

Mousing over any particular point reveals annotations and where things stand relative to the target trend line.

At the most basic level, Metrics are but graphs of numbers plotted over a span of dates, nothing you couldn’t do in Excel.  But coupled with reminders, target trend lines, and annotations, Metrics are so much more for guiding awareness, making goals real, and motivating progress.

Here’s how this shakes out in practice in a real coaching relationship.

In 45 seconds you or your client create a Metric.  Doing so looks like this:

At a glance this may look like a lot, but read it through and you’ll see that all you’re doing is declaring what you’re going to track, when you’re going to track it, and what’s your target, if you have one.  Regular reminders can be optionally set with a few clicks, and you’re done.

“What gets measured gets managed” is a famous quote by Peter Drucker, and because you’re reading this I’m going to assume you already know this and believe in its wisdom (if not, google it for some good reads).  As a coach one challenge in coaching our people is to get them to follow through with the plans we’ve made during the 6 days that fall between sessions (or whatever interval you coach at).  Measuring progress is one potential point of follow through failure, and minimizing that failure is a real win.

This is where CoachAccountable starts to beat out Excel.  Reminders delivered by text or email right on schedule enable your clients to reply right then and there with the stat of their progress: no system to log into, no need to fire up Excel, not even need to be at a computer if they’re using text reminders or have email on their phone.

The second bonus of this?  Awareness.  They’re in the middle of their week since your last coaching call, and days before the next one.  But the system is reminding them that “Hey: this is something that’s important to you.  How’s it going?”  The prompt to reply with a figure is powerfully orienting.  “Ah.  Someone cares about this.  I care about this.”  Follow through and performance in the matter is again so much more than just a good idea crafted with a coach days ago.

It gets better.

With time and the entry of data points, a graph is built, and superimposed on it is the target trend line, a graphical representation of how intention is stacking up against real performance.  If you’re on the wrong side of your target, the graph shows red.  On the right side, green.  Quickly it is clear when there is stagnation, and when there are bursts of productivity.  Look again at the graph above: you better believe my client was getting a little uncomfortable in mid-January and that the very visual representation of reality was goading him to redouble his efforts and get back to green.

It gets better.

On any data point your clients can make annotations, a simple note detailing what’s going on now relevant to the data point (easily entered by text or email, of course).  I encourage my clients to add a note as often as possible, a little reminder of what’s working when things are going well and what’s happening when things aren’t.  Over time a story builds that’s more than just numbers: trends reveal themselves, common pitfalls reveal themselves, things that really work reveal themselves.  In my client’s graph above we saw the two flat periods when he was spending too much time offline with his fiancee, and that when she was away for a few days his business really hummed.  He was able to have a super straight conversation with her about separation of work and play (he has a home office), and she, dear that she is and committed to his success, was fantastic about working out arrangements and structures to serve that end.

It even gets just a little bit better.

As you might have already guessed, your client tracking his or her progress in this manner gives you an instant and up-to-date view of how things are going.  Read the graph and its annotations and you’re right there in their world, able to proffer up insightful guidance and analysis, focusing laser-like on what’s working and what’s not.  You look like a genius to your clients, offering up just what they need from your elevated awareness of their progress.  You skip a lot of the progress report that eats up valuable time on your calls, and skip any hemming and hawing your client might do to save face in an off week.  You have a leg up in your job of giving your client value, and they are grateful for it.

And that, in total, is why Metrics are awesome.  If you haven’t used them in your coaching yet, give them a try with a free 30 day trial of CoachAccountable.

One of the huge wins of coaching software is to keep a running record of actions and performance metrics.  It makes it easy for you to know at a glance how your client is doing (way better than burning through precious coaching session minutes getting the progress update), allows you to give insightful support based on what is and isn’t working, and gives both you and your client a tangible sense of progress and accomplishment as records accumulate.

The key to realizing these benefits is to make it super easy for a client to keep these records up to date.  Having them log in each day to record what’s new is a lot to ask, trust me.  Over the summer I built a way for my clients to update the system by responding to text reminders, for both actions and metrics.  “Just enter your cell and set up text reminders” I told them, and this worked/works swimmingly for me and my peeps.

But for logistical and technological reasons, CoachAccountable supports SMS interactions only for US cell numbers.  No problem, I figured I’d have some time to handle international users later.  But it turns out that, when I launched last week, one of the first day sign ups happens to be from a fellow based in China.

Looks like the internationalization capacities of CoachAccountable are being tested sooner than later.

So there is to make on-the-fly client data entry available to all, and today I’m releasing a feature that does just that.  Now email reminders can be used for updating things just as easily as text messaging can be.  If you set a reminder email for an action, simply replying to the email with “done” is all it takes to mark it complete in CoachAccountable.  If you have a daily email reminder for tracking your minutes of exercise, just replying “30 a run around the lake” will add that number for today along with your annotation.

So reminders are twice as nice: they keep your client aware of what they’re working on, and allow them to enter and track their progress in seconds.

Writing the reply email looks like this:

And then a minute later the client page shows this:

After 5 months of development and a nearly 3-year hiatus, CoachAccountable is now relaunched in its second incarnation: a near complete remix and rethinking of the original.  As I mentioned earlier version 1 really didn’t deliver in terms of making coaching relationships more effective, but 2.0 has really shone at the task during its incubation with real coaching relationships.

There’s much more to say about the path thus far, but for now I’ll let the software speak for itself.

www.coachaccountable.com

In 60 seconds you can set yourself up with a free 30-day, no credit card required.  Give it a whirl.

Development on CoachAccountable 2.0 has been treat these last 5 months.  These last few weeks the system has seen a lot of polish as everything gets ready for public presentation.  Here are a few screenshots that give a sense for how things are coming together.

Client actions.  Being able to set reminders via text is a serious with for timely follow through.

Client Metrics.  Super easy-to-use system for having clients track quantitative progress.

The Client Stream.  A running display of all elements of a coaching relationship in CoachAccountable, which coach and client can comment freely on keep focus on what’s important.

Assigning a worksheet.  Your own templates, easy to edit on the fly, and with a due date and reminders for your client.

And here’s the system with and without custom branding activated, one of my favorite bits of technical magic that allows coaches to make the system all their own.

CoachAccountable relaunches to the public this week.  Stay tuned.

As I mentioned earlier, I was looking forward to sharing some of the feedback of the CoachAccountable 2.0 beta testers.  Last time around (meaning CA1.0), we were eager to give beta tester accounts to just about anyone who expressed the slightest interest.  Participation among the recipients was scattered to say the least, as stickiness and follow-through with usage and feedback were scarce.

This time around I only invited a select few, people whom I knew from at least a few conversations and who showed above-average interest the potential of coaching software.  This was quite deliberate to minimize distraction from the real task at hand: getting the software ready for a public launch, which is of course where the real feedback comes.

Alas, will such a small sample size any noise on the signal becomes disproportionately large.  In this case the signal I’m after is the kind of feedback that can only arise from in-depth use, and it’s been greatly impeded by busy schedules among my small group (indeed, it’s a tall order to ask any coach to explore adopting a whole new set of tools, especially with things still-in-flux).

So I don’t have perspectives and insights from others about applying CoachAccountable to coaching relationships for an extended period of time.  I do, however, have a few first impressions to share:

I do plan on using it and am very excited about the program. I absolutely love it and it’s capabilities! :-)

And

Love the metrics.  This is a really nice way to track the progress of my coachees.

And then my favorite:

Holy FUCK this is beautiful.   You MUST send an evaluation invite to …  . She’s going to be VERY interested in this, I guarantee.

So there are some good things being seen in the eyes of people who are not me.

Now there is but to get the software out the door and let the whole interested world give it a crack.  I’ve been doing a bit of world travel lately, but soon I’ll be settled in Cusco and with that bit of normalcy progress will resume.  Expect a launch by the end of August, and drop me a line if you’d like to be notified of when you can sign up for your own account.

I’m happy to announce that today the new version of CoachAccountable moves from beyond the confines of me and my coachees, and into the hands of others.  The software has been proving itself well in practice (indeed, the aforementioned condition that I love it has been met), and it is polished and complete now to the point where I’m eager to know how it fares to help the coaching done by other coaches.

To my beta testers I make the following three requests in exchange for a free, full access account for the next three months.  In my words to them they are as follows: